


Fire and Fatality

by deprough



Series: Dincember 2020 [4]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Arson, Dincember, Dincember 2020, Gen, Murder, depictions of murdered bodies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27939597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deprough/pseuds/deprough
Summary: The criminals strike back.
Relationships: Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Din Djarin, Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Original Character(s), Din Djarin/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Dincember 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2032882
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Fire and Fatality

**Author's Note:**

> This is part four of Dincember. You'll want to read the series in order so that everything makes sense.
> 
> 12/7/2020 Dincember prompt - Fire*
> 
> *I'm pretty sure they meant a fire in a hearth. sorrynotsorry

The warning bell clanged loudly and Corrie sat up, jarred out of sleep. She had half a second to wonder what was going on when someone yelled, “Fire!”

That woke her up, and she threw on the first pants, sweater and socks she touched from the piles on her floor. She paused at the door to slam her feet into her boots and grab her gun belt, then she dashed outside. 

Brama stuck her head out just as Corrie emerged, and she shouted, “Mom, the kids!” Her mother nodded, hiked up her nightgown and raced to Corrie’s house. With her kids safe, the sheriff headed for the town square.

The jail burned.

For a shocked second, Corrie stared; then she remembered,  _ Talee was on duty tonight.  _ The water trough hadn’t frozen over yet and Corrie ripped off her sweater, dunked it, and threw it back on. The shock of cold drew a shout from her but she didn’t hesitate to shove open the door. In the dancing light, she could see six forms on the floor, unmoving.

“No, no!” she cried and grabbed the nearest. Talee Relston, Corrie’s night deputy, was dead with a slit throat. The next one, Delli Sypikne, also lay in a pool of her own blood. On down she went, frantically checking for life and finding none. 

A wet blanket dropped over her, and she looked up to see Mando looming over her. “They’re dead, let’s go!” he shouted over the roaring of the flames.

Corrie shook her head. “No!”

“Sheriff, the  _ building _ is on fir--”

She grabbed the top of his breastplate and yanked his helmet close to her face. “We don’t leave our dead to burn! Help me or get out!” Her bold statement was undercut by the coughing fit that choked her on the last word.

He pulled her hand loose and tied his grapple line around Talee’s legs, then grabbed Delli and Rhan by their coats and started to drag them out. Corrie got little Howen Relston over her shoulder and grabbed Nicka by her coat and pulled. As she headed for the door, someone started to pull Talee out by Mando’s line, and the man himself passed Corrie as he went back for the final body. 

The town had gathered, and the weeping had already started. Old Man Relston stood with his hand on his son’s shoulder as he rocked Talee’s body and wept. Delli’s grown children were already gathered around her, shielding Delli’s grandchildren from the sight of the fatal wound on her neck. When Corrie laid Nicka down in the snow, the young woman’s father moaned with grief, but that was nothing compared to the sound Old Man made when he saw his grandson in Corrie’s arms. “I’m sorry,” she said to him as he came and took the child from her. 

Mando pulled the last one out into the snow and stepped back so that his family could claim them. No one came to mourn Spang Myrishi, and Corrie frowned. “He lives way out of town,” she muttered. His family was the furthest away, kept to themselves, and barely considered themselves part of the town.

Mando brought her a dry blanket; she hadn’t felt the cold until the offering reminded her of her wet clothing. As she sank into the dry warmth gratefully, he ruined her pleasure by stating, “They may have taken prisoners.”

For a second, she was angry that he wasn’t giving them even a second to grieve, but he was also right. “Koda!” she hollered, and her deputy turned away from the burning jail. It was well and truly caught now, as the dried evergreens and red Lifeday ribbons on the eevees burst into fire. “Get the other deputies. We have to get everyone counted. We have to know if they took captives.”

Her deputy paled but nodded quickly. He started to leave but Corrie grabbed his arm, looking down at Spang’s body. “Find Kern. Ask him to pull out one of his speederbikes and bring it to me. I need to check on the farmsteads, starting with the Myrishi’s.”

Koda looked even more grim and nodded before disappearing into the growing crowd. Mando said, “There’s a message on the side of the next building.”

Together, they walked over, and Corrie read the painted words aloud, “Two to one exchange.”

“We must have missed someone in the woods,” Mando said. “Someone escaped.”

“Can you hunt them?” she asked.

“I can.”

“Then as soon as we’ve verified who’s safe, we’ll go,” she said.

~ * ~ * ~

Corrie knew what she’d find the second she stopped the speederbike outside the Myrishi farmhouse. The front door was open, and the gates to their gurt pen stood wide open. A few animals were huddled in the back of their shelter, a few ewes and wethers unwilling to leave the comfort of familiarity.

Corrie drew her pistol, then stood and listened. She couldn't hear anything, and she knew that the culprits were likely long gone. She closed the gate; Spang had kin on the north side of the township and the gurts would be theirs. 

Swallowing, she checked the house. The murders had ransacked it, but it didn’t look like the family had suffered. “Small mercies,” Corrie muttered as she covered Sunga’s body with a blanket. After a second, she flipped the blanket back and knelt to touch Sunga’s arm. Cold and starting to stiffen; they’d been killed well before the fire had started.

Covering Spang’s wife back up, Corrie left the farmhouse and shut the door, being sure it latched. She’d send someone out to their kin to see if they wanted to handle the funerals. If not, the people of Libu would see to it. 

She mounted the speederbike and left, turning toward the next homestead. She had about a dozen to check tonight, then a posse to lead in the morning. They were going to find those responsible, and they were going to  _ end _ them.

That was one thing that the invading criminals hadn’t realized yet. They thought killing innocents would scare the townfolk into backing down. All they’d done was escalate the war. As she raced through the night, Corrie muttered to herself, “Good thing I have a Mandalorian on my side.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, thanks for reading. If you'd like (almost) daily updates on my writing, as well as blogs and reblogs abotu whatever catches my fancy, you can follow me on Tumblr @deprough. Also, I post almost daily excerpts of my writing as accountability, so if you want sneak peaks of what I'm doing, come follow me.


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